Multimedia Message Distribution in a Constrained Environment

Abstract

Currently there are standards governing message handling, in particular MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions)[1,2], for telecommuting mail messages encompassing a multitude of media, such as graphics images, voice data and motion video apart from plain text. However, the MIME standard (and also work in progress[3]) presupposes certain minimum technical capabilities amongst interconnected and participating mailservers for distribution of such multimedia mail. In particular, the interconnecting channels between mailservers should be of sufficient bandwidth to conduct the large amount of data in MIME messages at 'reasonable' rates and also the nodes must have adequate storage capacity for same. This requirement for bandwidth of channels and storage of mailservers for MIME capability prevents users connected to 'underprivileged'mail nodes from enjoying the benefits brought about by multi-media information and messaging. This may be in spite of the end users owning or having access to resource rich machines.In this paper a smart approach to routing of multimedia messages in an internetwork of mailservers, disparate in storage capacity, performance and network bandwidth, is presented.